College Financial Aid

The College Board’s latest efforts to encourage talented low-income students to apply to top colleges, while laudable in intent, will indeed create tensions surrounding financial aid at most institutions. Without more financial aid, getting more low-income students to apply to top colleges will just result in more rejections.

About two-thirds of America’s top 150 private colleges and universities with the highest endowments per student are not need-blind in admissions, and already reject talented low-income applicants because of students’ financial need. And many of the need-blind schools are already spending as much as is sustainable from their endowments.

To make progress on low-income access, institutions need incentives to increase financial aid. The federal government can play a role by tying its higher education dollars directly to access. In the end, more financial aid is essential if colleges are going to be successful in enrolling more talented low-income students.